EVENTS

“The trophies of the feminist agenda”

And now for a visit to the WorshipFamily crowd. This time it’s a site called Fix the Family, whose subject and theme and purpose and enthusiasm seems to be loathing of feminism. But don’t be confused! This is not the slime pitter, Twitter harasser, Thunderfoot, call them all cunts brand of feminism-loathing. It’s the other kind. The family values kind.

Probably the most controversial and rejected position we have at Fix the Family is that parents should not send their daughters to college. It is even more vehemently opposed than the submission of wives to their husbands. Both of these positions we have are a threat to the trophies of the feminist agenda, so the rejection we receive is always emotionally charged and ends up insulting, since once explained logically, the opposition runs out of substance and is only left to hurl insults and presume and misconstrue this practical wisdom into some chauvinistic evil. But to distinguish these 2 issues, we are NOT saying that sending a girl to college or women working is a sin. But after looking at the issues we raise, we would challenge anyone to convince us that college for girls is not a near occasion of sin.

Of course it is. At college they might learn to think critically, to ask questions, to reject bad stupid answers.

She will be in a near occasion of sin. Just think of the environment that college-age students live in. You have a heavy concentration of young people all living together without the supervision of parents at the most sexually charged state of life they will experience. How can one expect that anyone would be able to avoid these temptations, even on a Catholic college campus much less a secular one? So if it is unnecessary for one to be in a near occasion of sin, is it prudent to willingly put oneself there?

Oh that kind of sin. He just means sex. God what a claustrophobic little mind.

She will not learn to be a wife and mother. Nothing that is taught in a college curriculum is geared toward domestic homemaking. On the contrary, it is training in a very masculine role of a professional career. So there becomes a severe inner conflict in a woman when she starts trying to be a homemaker and juggle a career alongside it. Often when a career woman discerns the possibility of giving up her career, she faces the reality that she has had no training in homemaking and often has the thought “What would I do at home all day.” Stay-at-home mothers are actually very busy industrious women and do absolutely beautiful marvelous things.

You like them so much, you do them.

It must be popular thought – there are nearly five thousand comments there. Yeesh. The good news is, lots are hostile.

This is the point where I make mention of the fact that the United States Marine Corps expends a sizeable minority of its energy in training young* men** to become the world’s deadliest force of housewives*** the world has ever seen. They issued me a sewing kit, taught me how to iron razor-sharp creases, and shouted at me until I scrubbed toilets to perfection. I was brought to a high level of proficiency in polishing brass and silver trinkets, taught to maintain fancy leather shoes, and I learned the sort of poise and posture that finishing school students can only dream of. There’s nothing more manly than running a floor buffer, or clipping loose threads out of the hem of your trousers.

*mostly
** and some smaller number of women
*** by the sexist definition we’re talking about

On learning ‘domestic home-making’ – going away to college usually involves having a residence of your own (or shared with house or flatmates) which requires cleaning, cooking, doing your own laundry and taking out your own trash. It’s not called being a ‘housewife’ just being an adult, and plenty of men learn these things too.

– Presumably, FTF-conservad00d is aware that people are still sending their daughters to college, and thus there will still be young ladies around to, uh, tempt young men into the path of premarital sin, or whatever.
– (Presumably…) FTF-d00d believes to some extent that premarital sex is also a sin for young men.
– At college, young men usually live away from home and have to do their own housekeeping, thereby “emasculating” themselves into doing “women’s work.”
– Statistically more traditionally-male-leaning jobs require only a high school diploma or GED than do traditionally-female-leaning jobs.

Soooooooo…Hey, Fix the Family, where’s the post on “Reasons not to send your son to college”? (I mean it is pretty expensive, after all. Think of the money you’d save if NONE of your kids went to college!)
I’ll be waiting here. With this tea.

Interestingly (to me) or maybe not this guy is catholic, I don’t know where these kind of arrogant, ignorant mysoginistic morons come from but if they’d been around when I was a little-catholic-kid I’d probably left even earlier than I did. Seems the older I get the more reactionary catholics get. Or maybe it’s just an american-catholic thing? Here are a few other american catholics – Newt Gingrich, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Santorum, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Bishop Olmstead,…..makes you think, dunnit?

Pope Frankie’s going to have his work cut out cleaning out these Augean stables. His latest pronouncements in Civita Cattolica won’t sit well with this crowd. I foresee another papal assassination at some point and the resurrection of JP2.

It’s Gender Essentialism at its core. The notion that men and women have innately/socially developed different traits that are predictive on any one individual.

That’s the problem with looking at it from a 2d perspective…how can one ever hope to fix what one doesn’t understand?

There’s two axis here. There’s Feminist/MRA…that is how one sees the power differential between men and women in society. The second is Gender Essentialist/Egalitarian. That is again, how predictive/prescriptive gendered traits are on any given individual.

I’m not sure how to describe this group in terms of the Feminist/MRA axis…it’s hard to get a handle on such ultra traditionalism (although from their own point of view, I’m sure they’d self-describe themselves as being exactly in the middle), but EXTREMELY Gender Essentialist.

Now here’s the tricky bit. There’s no way any groups like this would by in any way, shape or form be supported by the other side of the “rift” here, who are generally deeply Egalitarian. In fact, that’s what the rift is largely about in the first place. Egalitarianism vs. Gender Essentialism. Which is why I find the whole thing quite stupid because the discussion is being forced on an entirely different vector than it actually should be. However, to be fair, the whole EvGE thing is just starting to be explored now.

And yes. That means that there are a lot of us who are extremely concerned about attempts to introduce Gender Essentialism into the atheist/skeptic movement. That it’s a different TYPE of GE is irrelevant.

And yes. I’m saying that many people here have views that are MUCH closer to this group than most people on the other side of the ‘Rift”. Don’t like it? Cool. Change your views. .

Well, as REVOLTING as this is – and as foreign – I am grateful you found and posted it.

For those days when the energy surfaces to ‘remove the plank in my own eye….’.

And find someone to use it on in a good metaphorical thumping.

My neighborhood is currently heavy on the Lutherans, most of us head to the same church. We are privileged enough so we don’t have to pick which kid gets the college education. That privilege is certainly supported by most of the couples both having college educations. None of these women (some stay-at-homes like me, some work full time, some part time) have any problem finding fulfillment with their lives. No more than their husbands do, anyway. And I think they’d have some pretty sharp words for anyone who wanted to ‘fix’ them. This site is fifty shades of horrible

“She will not learn to be a wife and mother.” I’m gonna try to mansplain that to my women coworkers with advanced degrees. I’ll soon be posting as “Borax, That guy who got laughed off the floor with his associates degree.”

Now here’s the tricky bit. There’s no way any groups like this would by in any way, shape or form be supported by the other side of the “rift” here, who are generally deeply Egalitarian.

No, they’re deeply Libertarian. Libertarians pay lip service to the idea of egalitarianism, but in practice what they want is to preserve existing hierarchies. The idea is that they get to pretend that they’ve earned their position in the hierarchy by virtue of being superior human beings. (But in reality, most of them are more-or-less average people who had the good luck to be born into the right demographic group.)

So the rift over harassment starts out with the Libertarians saying, “Well, being harassed has never caused any major problems for me. Since I’m a Superior Human Being, I obviously don’t need to change anything about myself. Instead, other people should emulate me; they should stop thinking that harassment is something that causes problems for them.”

Then other people say, “Wait, why should all of the burden fall on the targets of harassment? Couldn’t we try to stop the harassment instead of telling people not to be bothered by it?” The Libertarians correctly recognize this as an attack on the existing social hierarchy, and they get all upset and defensive.

And yes. I’m saying that many people here have views that are MUCH closer to this group than most people on the other side of the ‘Rift”.

I don’t see it. The Libertarians and the FixTheFamily crowd are both coming from the same bigoted mindset: An unshakable belief in their superiority to everyone else, combined with a spectacular lack of introspection.

(At this point, a silly person would say. “Well, bigots think they’re superior to outsiders, but those outsiders think they’re superior to bigots. Really, both sides are equally bad!” I hope no one is going to say that.)